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Texas Ministry in Measles Outbreak Misrepresented by Media

At the end of August, a measles outbreak that sickened more than 20 people in Texas was traced by health authorities back to a megachurch known as the Eagle Mountain International Church.

The blame for the outbreak was placed on pastor Terri Copeland Pearsons’ promotion of faith over science in dealing with health issues. In particular, the media heavily focused on the fact that Pearsons had recently brought up concerns about connections between vaccines and autism – a connection which most mainstream media accounts are very quick to point out is unproven.

The faithful of EMIC are painted throughout the media as a sort of a crazy cult that prefers to pray rather than use medicine. Atheists across the Internet had a fiend day with the story, calling the pastor everything from stupid and dangerous to outright phony.

The story was used to paint a picture of all those who question vaccinations as crazy, but those media accounts leave out the fact that there are serious risks associated with many vaccines, and that the overuse of vaccines is actually altering long-term human immunity. Painting all anti-vaccine activists as crazy is much easier than facing the reality of what artificially created vaccines are doing to the human race.

The Dilemma of Vaccines

The first example of the dire consequences of vaccines is evidenced by the resurgence of the shingles virus among older Americans, and the fact that the chickenpox virus had actually provided humans with a natural immunity-boost against shingles. Chickenpox was a right of passage for most children up until the 1995 vaccine came on the market.

New York Times Best Selling Author Dr. Joseph Mercola has reported that “vaccinating children for chickenpox may very well be causing a shingles epidemic”. (1)

The issues don’t stop there. In February of 2013, multiple peer reviewed medical publications revealed that the H1N1 vaccine known as Pandemrix led to narcolepsy cases in Europe, and there were also cases reported of the vaccine leading to Guillain-Barre Syndrome. (2)

The Safety of Manufactured Vaccines

In another case that stands against the idea that vaccines are safe is the GlaxoSmithKline settlement in 2012, where the company had to pay $3 billion in criminal fees for covering up safety data related to unapproved uses of its drugs. The case revealed that sales representatives were encouraged by the company to sell its drugs to doctors for unapproved uses.

Among drugs like Wellbutrin and Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline also produces various vaccines. What is most troubling is that Americans trust their health to a company, and to doctors, who were willing to risk patient health for financial gain. FBI investigators described the cases as showing that, “medical professionals are more willing to risk patient harm in their schemes.” (3)

Then there was the case of the Swine flu vaccine, quickly developed and rushed to market in 2009 in the face of what was being called a pandemic. Not only was the vaccine found to be ineffective – only 1.5% of those injected were protected (4) – but it was also suspected as the cause of over 1500 miscarriages in 2010. (5)

Finally, there was the Merck vaccine known as Gardasil, intended to guard against human papillomavirus, or HPV. That vaccine has been connected with reported cases of Guillan-Barre syndrome, seizures, blood clotting, heart problems, miscarriages, cervical cancer and death. (8)

Faith and Medicine

So, while it may be true that the evidence is mounting against the vaccine preservative thimerosal causing autism (6), that doesn’t mean that vaccines do not represent a danger to individual health of children and adults, or even worse to the evolutionary health of future generations of humans. In fact, all of the cases above reveal that there is plenty of evidence to warrant concern about the actual safety of vaccines.

However, as revealed by a May 2013 piece written by Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center, there is a full-court press throughout corporate-run media sources and government outlets to villainize parents and discredit writers or journalists who might question the true safety of vaccines. (7)

So, what’s the truth about this “crazy” Eagle Mountain International Church in Texas, which was blamed for the measles outbreak there? Well, according to an update on August 28th from Pastor George Pearsons, the Church beliefs were misrepresented by the media. The pastor wrote:

“In the past several days there has been incorrect or misleading information being reported about Kenneth Copeland Ministries/Eagle Mountain International Church’s (KCM/EMIC) position on vaccines and receiving medical attention. To be clear, KCM/EMIC believes in, and advocates the use of, medical professionals. [snip] As an example of KCM/EMIC’s commitment to the importance of the medical profession in the healing process, KCM/EMIC provides its employees with an onsite medical clinic staffed by an MD and a CMA, a first-rate health insurance program, and has sponsored onsite vaccination clinics.”

The Truth

So, what was the real story behind the Measles outbreak? Pastor Pearsons explained the situation as follows:

Recently, a visitor came to our church from an overseas mission’s trip and had contracted measles while there. After being tested, the lab notified the Tarrant County Health Department who confirmed it as measles. The Health Department met with our leadership team the next day and advised us on how to handle the situation. That day, without hesitation, Pastor Terri and I immediately complied with all of their recommendations. We invited the Health Department to conduct a total of five vaccination clinics at our church. Vaccinations were made available at no cost to our daycare children, KCM employees and congregation members.

This combined with the explanation that the Church even has an on-site medical clinic staffed by an MD and a CMA is not exactly the sort of thing one might expect from a ministry where, according the the Associated Press, “…there is a pervasive culture that believers should rely on God, not modern medicine, to keep them well.”

Seems ironic that a Church that doesn’t rely on medicine would offer its staff a health insurance plan, doesn’t it?

The real story here isn’t that there was a measles outbreak. The same situation could have occurred anywhere in the country where someone returned from an international trip who had come in contact with the virus. The real news here is how the story was framed in the media, and how anyone who would dare to question the safety of many of these vaccines is demonized.